Conventionally, musicians and supporting sound technicians or engineers need to adjust a multitude of audio-manipulation hardware devices to desired settings in advance of live performances. The hardware is often arranged in one or more racks, or stacks, and, depending on the sophistication of the performance, included tens or even hundreds of knobs, dials, sliders, buttons, switches, and/or other adjustable components. The conventional arrangement is undesirably fixed and inflexible in that it cannot be changed readily to accommodate situational needs.
Different sound settings are needed for different situations. The scenarios include different types of music, different songs within the same genre, the venue, generally, and day-of-performance dynamics of the venue. Further, regarding venues, different venues have different acoustical characteristics. Performance sound is affected in a relatively-small concert hall, for instance, differently than in a domed stadium, and further different than at an outdoor venue.
Regarding dynamics, output sound is affected differently in the same venue based on particular arrangements of the room on the day of the performance, including stage location, curtain placement, sitting versus standing audience, and size and density of the audience. Technicians and/or artists also need to check the many hardware settings before every performance, or between sets or even songs, which is very time and energy consuming. And even when set property, the hardware controls are often subsequently adjusted improperly or unintentionally in stage set-up or during the performance.
As another shortcoming, the large number of settings also increases the likelihood of errors and malfunction.
Artists are also limited traditionally by the particular hardware available to them. A guitarist, for example, having only a first type of pre-amplifier, or any sound hardware device, is of course limited to using that hardware. And even if the guitarist had access to two or more such sound hardware devices, it is cumbersome to move the devices and/or manually change connections at the devices or instruments, especially during the performance.
Present-day digital products focus on editing recorded music for playback, not live performance. Digital audio workstations, for example, allow only sound editing of digitally-recorded music for playback from a conventional compact disc or other music storage medium.